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(CNN) Weeks after allowing the controversial Willow oil drilling project in Alaska to proceed, the Biden administration is auctioning more than 73 million acres of waters in the Gulf of Mexico for offshore oil and gas drilling.
It could be the first Gulf of Mexico lease sale to actually lead to new drilling under the Biden administration after a previous auction was embroiled in legal challenges and delays.
On Wednesday, the Department of the Interior’s Office of Marine Energy Management will hold a lease sale for an area that is more than double the size of the Willow Project in area. The administration was forced to put the sale on hold after Joe Manchin last year added it to the Cut Inflation Act, a major climate and energy bill signed into law by President Joe Biden.
Businesses were interested in bidding on 1.6 million acres out of the 73 million acres provided by the Biden administration, according to federal data released Tuesday night.
Environmental groups have already filed lawsuits to stop the lease sale, alleging flaws in the interior’s environmental analysis. They also have issues with the size and scope of their sales.
“There is nothing quite like this in an IRA,” said George Torgan, an attorney at the environmental law group Earthjustice. “If things go according to plan, it will be twice as big as Willow’s, and it will lock in fossil fuel development in the Gulf region for the next 50 years.”
Earthjustice has sued to stop similar projects in the past. Last year, a federal judge voided his even larger lease sale of 80 million acres of Gulf Coast oil and gas. This is after finding that environmental analysis of interiors did not adequately account for the climate impact of adding millions of tons of global warming pollution to the atmosphere.
The Biden administration estimates in its environmental analysis of the current lease sale that the oil and gas drilling resulting from the sale could result in about 21.2 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions.
A Interior Ministry spokesman declined to comment on the sale.
“I’m really disappointed that we haven’t seen anything less extensive than that, which basically offers most of the Gulf,” Torgan said. is.”
difficult leasing policy
Wednesday’s drilling auction wasn’t the first under the Biden administration, but it could stick to the first.
A troubling dispute over another 80 million-acre lease sale offered in 2021 came after a Louisiana judge dismissed Biden’s attempt to ban new oil and gas leases on federal land and waters. Following a protracted legal battle. Interiors eventually canceled these leases, citing delays due to “conflicting court rulings.”
Manchin, who helped spearhead the Inflation Reduction Act, wrote specifically in a statutory provision requiring the Department of the Interior to conduct new oil and gas lease sales in Alaska’s Gulf and Cook Bay. not. Another sale he is due in September.
Wednesday’s lease sale came after the controversial Biden administration’s decision to give the green light to the Alaska oil drilling Willow project.
Amid protests on social media among young voters and climate change groups, the administration ultimately said it had little choice but to approve the project. Mr. Biden called Mr. Willow’s approval a “difficult decision” and said he was initially inclined to reject it.
Biden said last week in Canada that he was “very likely to be outright against it.” “But the advice I got from my lawyers was that if that’s the case, you’re very likely to lose in court, and let the oil companies lose the case in court.”
The Gulf of Mexico auction said global oil markets remain in turmoil and investors fear lingering effects from the threat of war and recession in Ukraine, said energy consultant and Rapidan Energy Group’s President Bob McNally said.
“The main reason oil investors are reluctant to invest, say 80%, has to do with these underlying issues,” McNally said. “It’s not because Joe Biden said no. [new] lease. There is a political factor, but it is not the main reason holding them back. ”
This story has been updated with more information.
CNN’s Kevin Liptak contributed to this report.
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